This invention relates, in general to the manner in which electronic documents are transmitted and received, and more specifically, to an account management method where user accounts may be distributed across multiple servers and the responsibility to manage the users is distributed to multiple organizations. Account information is embedded within the content of each transmission and used for authentication of source and protection of the integrity of the content within the transmission.
Developments through the internet and electronic or wireless transmission move more and more towards the elimination of paper documents, where possible, to paperless systems. There are significant reasons for parties to move from the hassle of paper documents to electronic documents.
One important reason parties are moving towards electronic document filing and transmission is it allows elimination of massive storage facilities. The information that is used to require large complexes of storage cabinets for paper documents and files can now be stored electronically, readily categorized, searched and easily retrieved. Personnel that used to be required for extensive filing and retrieving systems can now be reduced since in large measure the information can be stored on a networked computer system and easily accessed by the user from the convenience of their own personal computer.
Another reason parties are moving towards electronic document filing and transmission is the use of electronic documents allows automation of many manually intensive processes. When information is exchanged in paper format that needs to be maintained in a database, significant time and effort is required to translate the information from paper into the database. Transmitting information electronically allows some of these processes to be automated.
It is well known that documents can be readily transmitted electronically. This has become common place through the use of email, ftp, http, and other methods. Further, secure transmission of such documents has also become common place using encryption technology. However, in spite of the extensive use of electronic transmission of documents, even with secure encryption layers of communication, various groups, such as the legal courts and government agencies, have been slow to implement processes for accepting the filing of documents from one or more parties. In these cases, the courts and agencies or other similar receiving parties are concerned with the preservation of the documents, the long term ability to insure that the documents are not changed, document integrity during transmission, the authenticity of the documents, and the management process that allows some parties to transmit documents while disallowing other parties.
There have been various attempts in the industry to establish methods of electronically preparing documents, and submitting them to receiving organizations. Frequently this process is referred to as e-filing. Usually because a single vendor controls the preparation and transmission, as well as the receiving process, user authentication, document integrity, and long term protection of evidence are managed through closed processes. Courts and government agencies have piloted various strategies with single vendor control, and yet almost all of these pilots have failed to gain significant user adoption for various reasons. In addition, previous test pilots have not been able to provide a system that embeds into the content of the transmission the authentication of source, document integrity and evidence protection that can be shared in an open environment yet remain secure. Also the practicality of scaling an open process of user account management to tens of thousands of accounts, distributed across thousands of servers that support the authentication and document integrity has been difficult to achieve.
Accordingly, a method that provides a process for managing organization and user accounts that embeds authorization information into the content of the transmission, which can be distributed across multiple installations, supports document integrity, and assures long term protection of evidence, is needed.